Undercover video: DC abortionist says he would not assist a baby born alive

The pro-life organization Live Action released the second in its series of undercover video exposing late-term abortion facilities Monday.

In the most recent video, a Washington, D.C. abortion doctor explains how he would not help a baby born alive after an abortion attempt.

“Hopefully we’ll get this pregnancy out intact, but it doesn’t always happen that way,” abortion doctor Cesare Santangelo says on the video, to a 24-week pregnant undercover Live Action investigator. “I try and sever the umbilical cord first, and we wait for that to stop pulsing, and this way the fetus is expired first.”

When the undercover Live Action investigator presses Santangelo on what would happen if the baby was born alive, the doctor responds that there are things he can do to make sure that she does not take the child home with her.

“Technically — you know, legally we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive. But, you know, it probably wouldn’t. It’s all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point,” he said on the undercover video.

“Let’s say you went into labor, the membranes ruptured, and you delivered before we got to the termination part of the procedure here, you know?” he continued. “Then we would do things — we would — we would not help it. We wouldn’t intubate. It would be, you know, uh, a person, a terminal person in the hospital, let’s say, that had cancer, you know? You wouldn’t do any extra procedures to help that person survive. Like ‘do not resuscitate’ orders. We would do the same things here.”

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Live Action president Lila Rose claimed that the videos her group is distributing prove that Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell, on trial for murder, is not an anomaly.

“It is clear from our investigation that the horrors revealed during the Kermit Gosnell trial are not exclusive to that clinic,” she said in a statement. “Our videos expose the truly gruesome, illegal, and inhuman practices going on inside many of America’s abortion clinics. Our investigation reveals that these inhuman practices are just another day at the office for abortionists and their staff.”

“By making the killing of our weakest children their profession, these doctors, nurses, counselors, and staff make a mockery of medicine and the Hippocratic oath to ‘do no harm.’ These children deserve our protection, not the ignorance that allows these atrocities to continue,” Rose concluded.

Speaking with The Washington Post, Santangelo explained that he was trying to reassure the undercover Live Action investigator, adding that he would call 9-1-1.

“What I said is, basically I wouldn’t do anything extraordinary,” he told The Post. “We would call EMS. We would call 9-1-1. But I wouldn’t do intubation or anything. … You let nature take its course.”